I'm pretty sure that there was a size limit for Puget sound Chinook in the 70's, but can't remember what it was. I remember wrtiting a ticket to a participant in the old Tengu Salmon Derby in 1972 (held every weekend) for a short Chinook. A VERY rare violation.
For years I've tried to get momentum for building a hatchery on the Deschutes in Tumwater, but promises by WDFW keep being broken. I think that the hatchery promises were made mostly to keep a few peeople employed. Hundreds of thousands have been spent on plans, maybe more than a million. I believe in hatcheries. Sometimes the returns to the Deschutes holding pens are phenomenal even after they've passed through a bunch of fisheries. The idiots that manage this hatchery quit passing Chinook upstream about ten (?) years ago. That action has helped kill an ecosystem that was established in the early 1950's. Now the river is open to salmon fishing, but no Chinook are passed upstream. All surplus is sold. In my law enforcement training, I'm wondring who is getting paid off! It's happened before.